The invention generally relates to a display in a photographic camera and particularly to the display of the shutter speeds by means of a line of light emitting diodes (LED's) in the viewfinder.
Shutter speed displays which take the form of a line of LED's in photographic cameras, especially SLR cameras, are relatively common. LED's are light emitting semi-conductor diodes which appear as tiny spots of light in the viewfinder of a camera. LED lines are comprised of closely adjacently disposed individual LED's wherein depending upon the camera, an aperture setting or shutter speed value is associated with each individual LED.
In high quality SLR cameras in which the exposure is set automatically either as an automatic shutter speed setting or aperture setting, LED lines serve as the only means of monitoring the shutter speed or aperture settings chosen by the automatic control and as the only means of recognizing absolute limit values in order to avoid over or under exposure.
If the operator tends to rely on the automatic exposure control of a camera, the LED signals in the viewfinder are given in most cases only fleeting and unconcentrated attention and checking them may even be forgotten. In this way, it can happen that from one exposure to another involving different levels of brightness of the objects, the change of exposure time, e.g. from 1/60th as a fast exposure to 1/8th of a second as a marked time exposure goes unheeded, because the distance between the individual LED's in the line amounts to only a few millimeters. The viewing eye during a fleeting glance will not immediately note the minor spatial distance between the LED for 1/60th of a second and that for 1/8th of a second. Therefore, although the exposure will be correctly taken at 1/8th of a second, the shutter speed may be so slow that if the camera is hand-held, the image may be blurred by movement.